This is not good. Not good at all. It’s still pretty early in the game so there isn’t yet any real way to conclusively verify the accuracy of these reports but they are still worrisome, to say the least.

There are a few sources here and there — like Iran’s IRNA, Stratfor and India’s Zee News — have started reporting in the last few hours that at least two “top nuclear scientists of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission” have been snatched by the Taliban, likely at the behest of Al-Qaeda, and are likely being held somewhere in Waziristan…

The two scientists were kidnapped about six months ago. To avoid international embarrassment Pakistan Government has kept this information under wraps, said an Indian private news channel “Zee News”.

According to information available with Zee News, nuclear scientists have been kidnapped by Taliban at the behest of Al-Qaeda.

Further investigations reveal that Al-Qaeda may be using the expertise of the scientists to produce nuclear bombs. The two scientists are reportedly being held somewhere in Waziristan, near Afghanistan border.

In January this year Pakistan security agencies had foiled another attempt by Taliban militia to kidnap nuclear scientists. Earlier, incidents of Taliban militia stealing uranium in NWFP have already been reported. PAEC also has a uranium mining facility in NWFP.

If there is anyone out there who even slightly doubts Al-Qaeda’s motives here, my message is simple: shoot yourself in the head now before you pollute the gene pool. You are too stupid to live.

We are talking about an organization that has stated, quite plainly, that its ultimate objective is to establish a worldwide Caliphate by any means necessary, including killing anyone that disagrees with them (put that in yer ACLU pipe and smoke it). Make no mistake, if these assholes get a nuke, they will use it.

Maybe somewhere near you.

Quebec politics actually can be more interesting than a critical review of the Encyclopeadia of Proctology. Who’d’a thunk it, eh? Most people who read here regularly already know that I find Quebec politics in general — and the current provincial election in particular — to be someplace between belly button lint and spinach on my scale of interestingness (yes, that’s a word).

So you can probably imagine how surprised I was when I stumbled across a story about a Quebec politician saying something that wasn’t just interesting, it was damn smart, too! 😯 It seems that the ADQ‘s leader, Mario Dumont, is taking a page from the “enough of this bullshit, already” book and is talking about making criminals actually do some time for their crimes:

Dumont says an ADQ government would not allow repeat offenders to get probation and that temporary passes would be given to prisoners only for humanitarian reasons. Dumont unveiled his public security program while campaigning Thursday in Trois-Rivieres.

The ADQ leader also says too many prisoners who belong behind bars are being released for overcrowding and financial reasons.

Dumont cited a report saying that a third of inmates in Quebec’s prisons are repeat offenders who have been jailed at least 10 times.

Ten times, huh?  Well, obviously the hug-a-thug method is only accomplishing two things: Jack and shit.  And Jack didn’t show up.

I’ll admit right off the hop that I don’t really know much about the ADQ’s policies or ideology but if they keep coming up with stuff like this, they might be just what Quebec needs to pull their heads out of their collective derrières and get them on track to being productive partners in confederation.  I can’t believe that I’m actually saying this but… I just might start paying attention to this little horse race.

Why do I have the creepy feeling that the only ones who are going to be surprised at this are the wishy-washy, hug-a-thug, “but they’re just children,” social worker clone, overindulgent doorknobs that thought idiotic legislation like the YCJA was a good idea to begin with?  I remember, back in the ’80s, when scary social conservatives were saying that the YOA would be the thin end of the wedge for juvenile delinquents to run amok.

“If juveniles aren’t forced to face consequences that reflect the seriousness of their actions,” they said, “they’ll just become more and more brazen in defying the law.”  The go-easy-on-the-poor-dears social worker set responded, predictably, as if anyone against lenience towards little criminal bastards was suggesting that the little buggers be flogged in the public square with barbed wire.  But the truth is that without real consequences, juveniles, just like any other criminals, have been having less and less respect for the laws of the land; even flaunting their defiance of it.  The chickens, as it were, have come home to roost:

Sarnia police are looking for help after 150 teens tore apart a home and stole things after a party that got out of control.

And they’re not getting any help from the teens who went wild and then posted pictures of their destruction — pegged in the $10,000 range — on the internet.

[…]

By the time police showed up at 10 p.m. after concerned calls from the host and neighbours, between 100 and 150 young people, aged 13 to 17, had punched holes in the walls of the home and ripped down drywall ceilings.

Can’t say that I didn’t see this coming.  And I’m starting to get tired of being right…

Well now, isn’t this something? I have to admit that I’m taking a little sadistic schadenfreude at the news that some French guy (Quebecois, not of the France variety) is getting the same treatment that Anglophones have been getting in this country for decades. Think about this: how many of you out there have lost, or know someone who’s lost a job because you couldn’t speak French or couldn’t speak it good enough? Well some dude from Quebec has finally gotten a taste of what we’ve been having shoved down our throats for years…

Yup, you guessed it: he got canned for having crappy English…

EDMONTON (Sun Media) – A Quebec ironworker is accusing Suncor of discrimination after he was fired for poor English, but a spokesman for the oil giant says poor communication can be dangerous.

The dismissal prompted a second Quebecer to quit Suncor in protest and has incensed the local ironworkers union, which is demanding Suncor do more to accommodate French-speaking tradesmen.

[…]

“Come work in Alberta, they say. Just not if you speak French – that’s what they mean,” Pelletier said.

Well, guess what, dickweed? Welcome to my world. I’ve lost out on plenty of jobs because my French sucks. And some of those were jobs where the odds of bumping into a French Canuck were about as good as Smirkin’ Jack!’s chances of being PM. And don’t even get me started on the topic of trying to find a job anyplace in Quebec if you’re an Anglophone…

And — just in case you hadn’t noticed, bonehead — YOU’RE IN ALBERTA! The overwhelming majority of the people there speak ENGLISH. Learn it. Anglos get treated like lepers in la belle province, so it’s only fair that you get a dose of your own medicine. If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander.

Honk, honk, asshole.

That seems to be CAIR‘s message to the organizers and participants of the recently-held first Secular Islam Summit held in St. Petersburg, Florida and ended on Sunday (and liveblogged by the Jawa Report). It seems that CAIR (militant Islam’s North American PR arm) is in a total snit about even the idea of somebody, especially Muslims, debating the merits or lack thereof, of Jihad. So, naturally, they reacted just like you likely guessed they would. As an article at Investors.com puts it:

The Washington-based group that boycotts airlines and bullies radio personalities and politicians into toeing the Islamist line is clearly worried about the message from Muslim reformers.

It dispatched its henchmen to Florida to shout the reformers down at their confab earlier this week. CAIR also posted on its Web site no fewer than four stories bashing the event and its courageous speakers, many of whom are women calling for an end to inequality and mistreatment under radical Islam.

CAIR declared the summit illegitimate because few of the participants are “practicing Muslims,” and those who are, it claims, are merely pawns playing into the hands of “Islamophobes.”

“In order to have legitimate reform, you need to have the right messengers,” asserted CAIR spokesman Ahmed Bedier.

To give some credit where it’s due, the article then wastes no time asking the obvious questions:

And who might that be? The four CAIR executives who have been successfully prosecuted on terrorism-related charges? The CAIR co-founder who said the Quran should replace the U.S. Constitution as “the highest authority in America”?

Standard Islamonutjob reaction procedure step 1: blame da Jooz…

Yes, Bedier argued, but the summit’s “funding is coming from the neoconservatives.” An article posted by CAIR suggests “Israeli intelligence” is behind the movement.

Step 2: play the islamophobia/race card:

“Islamophobia, the fear of Islam, which we fear is the root of events like this has unfortunately become an increasing concern in our society,” said Rabiah Ahmed, council spokeswoman. “It seems to be evolving into an accepted form of racism.”

Step 3: blame Bush:

Just pick a bloody time, already… 🙄

Those who have been paying attention know that the Canadian version of this terrorists’ apologist organization isn’t any better.

As for me, I say hats off to the organizers and participants of the Secular Islam Summit. I’ve never made any bones about taking the seemingly mythical “moderate Muslim majority” to task for its complicity of silence towards Islamofascism. It’s nice, for a change, to see at least some evidence that I just could be wrong…

And here I thought that this kind of idiocy was, gratefully, a thing of the past. I guess not. Oh, well; at least it dates back to the days of Grit government.  Plenty of media outlets are hooting away lately about an organization called the Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society (IMPACS) and a project that they were running in Afghanistan. Now, I don’t recall ever hearing about IMPACS before, but their webpage describes them as “a registered not-for-profit charitable organization committed to strengthening the voice and profile of civil society organizations in Canada and internationally,” and a little poking around seems to indicate a bit of a Leftist slant to their philosophy.

Another indication might be the pie-in-the-sky, impractical, idealistic approach that they took to their project in Afghanistan. According to the IMPACS website for the project:

IMPACS Afghanistan works to encourage the development of free and fair media in Afghanistan. It focuses its work on women’s participation in media, and the use of media as a tool to educate women.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? I mean, after all, isn’t it about time that Afghan women — who were treated little better than slaves or livestock under the Taliban regime — had more of a voice? Hell, this actually sounds like something I’d give a few bucks to myself, so look for all the usual suspects latched onto the public teat to wail away about how this is another example of the cold-hearted Conservative Hidden Agenda® now that Ottawa has pulled the plug (after damn near $3 million was already blown) on its funding. The problem is that the agency made a complete balls-up of it.

So what did they do to accomplish their stated goals? Well, see for yourself:

• “… the 2004 launch of a now defunct monthly newspaper in the capital of Kabul, the report says. Its purpose was in part to train female reporters and educate women about politics and other issues. “
• “The rest of the $2.7 million in total CIDA funds was previously used to start two radio stations. They offered women, especially in rural areas, a rare chance to be trained and heard in a repressively male-dominated culture.”

A radio station. In rural Afghanistan. Where most buildings have no electricity at all and the majority of the ones that do, haven’t got radios.

And a newspaper. Isn’t that nice? The problem with putting out a newspaper for Afghan women is that, thanks to the prohibition against schooling girls that was in force for all the years of Taliban rule, fewer than 10% of the female population can actually read the damn thing!

Now, I have NO problem whatsoever with charities that do good work (and there are plenty of them) but this… this was nothing more than a money pit. All it did was to supply a few do-gooder moonbats with jobs for a few months.  And, in typical Lefty fashion, they responded to questions with the predictable “go away; we’re doing nice things” attitude:

Asked to explain the audit’s findings, a CIDA spokesperson said no one was available.

“A briefing is not a possibility at this time,” said Greg Scott. In an e-mail, he said that IMPACS was the first media development group trying to put women’s voices on community radio.

The problem, Greggy, is that putting “women’s voices on community radio” doesn’t do Jack Shit. Teach them to read first.  Go out into the Afghan countryside and actually get your hands dirty.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The problem with “liberals” is that they see the world as they think it should be, act accordingly, and then wonder what the hell went wrong (or try to blame conservatives) when they end up accomplishing nothing.  Conservatives, on the other hand, see the world as it is, warts and all, and just deal with it in the most direct fashion possible.